At my PT appointment today, Adam told me that I\u2019m doing very, very well\u2026for someone \u2018my age\u2019, perhaps the best he\u2019s seen.\u00a0 He quickly qualified it by saying that ACL reconstruction is way more common among the 14-30 year olds.\u00a0\u00a0 Then he said that the few over-30 he\u2019s worked with have had a lot harder recovery than I\u2019m having.\u00a0 I\u2019ll take that as a compliment!<\/p>\n
He added \u201cthe Bridge\u201d and \u201cRetro-step-ups\u201d to my PT list, and removed passive extension and stair step-ups.\u00a0 The Bridge is an exercise for the gluts and hamstrings.\u00a0 On your back with knees bent at 90 degrees, you lift your butt and lower back off the floor.\u00a0 I\u2019m doing 15, eventually I\u2019ll work to doing it with just the affected leg.\u00a0 Retro-step-ups are stepping backwards up a step.\u00a0 I\u2019ll eventually do a full stair height but this one is pretty tough, so he started me out at 2\u201d step up.<\/p>\n
Stay the course!\u00a0 The retro-step-ups seem a bit easy so I increased the height to 3\u201d.<\/p>\n
I skipped my evening PT today, mostly because Kammy and I had the evening free and went out to a play then dinner and drinks.\u00a0 Truthfully, it felt good to skip one; the increasingly physical exercises are leaving my muscles sore at times.\u00a0 There was one painful part of the evening: The play.\u00a0 We were in the front row of the balcony and there was really no room to move my leg around.\u00a0 I\u2019m still not ready to sit with my knee at 90 degrees for over an hour\u2026that play could not be over soon enough.<\/p>\n
Today is a beautiful day in Minneapolis!\u00a0 Kammy and I overslept, and then had to go to a couple appointments.\u00a0 Once we got home I took care of my \u2018morning\u2019 PT even though it was early afternoon.\u00a0 Then I went out in the yard and did 3 hours of yard work.\u00a0 I took down some significant branches from some trees in the side yard and cut\/bundled\/bagged the whole lot.\u00a0 My knee was pretty tired by the end of it, but my back was probably even worse\u2026So, normal pains were worse than knee pain, is that a win?\u00a0 In spite of the 3 hour outdoor workout I still did my evening PT while we were catching up on a bit of Doctor Who.<\/p>\n
It is another beautiful day here in Minneapolis so we got up early.\u00a0 My leg feels tired today, but still I do the morning PT.\u00a0 We all do a bit of cleaning up, normal Sunday chores, and a bit of lounging around.\u00a0 Then I get the brilliant idea that we should go directly to Ikea and walk around there (and Target) for hours without finding anything we were looking for.\u00a0 In case you were wondering\u2026yeah, my leg is tired this evening.\u00a0 I iced it right after dinner and will keep it up for as much of the evening as I can.\u00a0 Still, I\u2019m planning to do the evening PT.\u00a0 With family coming to town in a couple days I expect it\u2019ll be much harder to keep up with the PT schedule\u2026<\/p>\n
Today was my 6 week follow-up with the surgeon.\u00a0 Unlike the 1 week follow-up this one was very quick.\u00a0 He checked on my range of motion, did a quick joint exam, looked at the healing scars.\u00a0 He noticed the swelling that I have left and said I could expect it to be mostly gone in another 6 weeks.<\/p>\n
Then he told me about grafts in this stage of recovery.\u00a0 It turns out that right after surgery you have a quite-strong tendon held in place by hardware.\u00a0 Over the course of the first several weeks it vascularizes and in the process weakens considerably.\u00a0 He hand-drew a graph and showed that in terms of strength, the graft will be at its weakest in a few weeks\u2026which I noticed will be right around the time that I\u2019m really feeling better.\u00a0 Then over the following three plus months it will get stronger and stronger as my body converts it from a tendon to a ligament.\u00a0 Basically, this is no time to think you can jump ahead in your activity.\u00a0 On the other hand, I expect the physical therapist to have me start jogging pretty soon.\u00a0 I have to say I\u2019m a bit nervous about that part.\u00a0 I was also surprised to hear my surgeon say he\u2019d prefer I ran outside instead of on a treadmill\u2026that it\u2019s safer.\u00a0 Kammy pointed out that the physical therapist was very impressed with my recovery to date \u201cfor a guy my age\u201d.\u00a0 I will take it as a compliment again.<\/p>\n
My brother is in town\u2026I\u2019ll have to be careful to keep up with PT!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Day 36 (Wednesday, June 1st) At my PT appointment today, Adam told me that I\u2019m doing very, very well\u2026for someone \u2018my age\u2019, perhaps the best he\u2019s seen.\u00a0 He quickly qualified it by saying that ACL reconstruction is way more common among the 14-30 year olds.\u00a0\u00a0 Then he said that the few over-30 he\u2019s worked with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greg.lyonkingdom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greg.lyonkingdom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greg.lyonkingdom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greg.lyonkingdom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greg.lyonkingdom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=185"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/greg.lyonkingdom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":240,"href":"https:\/\/greg.lyonkingdom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185\/revisions\/240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greg.lyonkingdom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greg.lyonkingdom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greg.lyonkingdom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}